No, not about his recently re-established relationship with Lindsay Shookus or what he thinks about his ex-wife, Jennifer Garner, getting serious with a new man.

During an appearance on “The Ellen Show” on Thursday, Affleck, 46, broke his silence about a tattoo, confirming to Ellen DeGeneres that the big, colorful phoenix tattoo on his back is indeed real — not fake as he once claimed.

The actor also insisted that the tattoo is “very meaningful to him,” Page Six reported. At the same time, he acknowledged that other people’s reactions were “not so much positive.”

That’s putting it mildly. The New Yorker called Affleck’s phoenix tattoo “garish” in a March 2018 column about his personal and career challenges at the time.

Last Saturday, almost exactly two years after Ben Affleck denied its existence, the back tattoo returned to haunt the headlines, itself a phoenix rising from the ashes of gossip rags past. https://t.co/wItYWWlb5I

Photos of a shirtless Affleck over the past few years have shown his tattoo as depicting the mythical bird rising from the ashes and spreading its wings up and over the actor’s entire back and shoulders.

Two of Affleck’s exes, ex-fiancee Jennifer Lopez and ex-wife Garner, publicly derided the phoenix imagery for its size and flamboyance, as well as for its symbolism.

“It’s awful!” Lopez said in an interview with Andy Cohen. She dated Affleck from 2002 to 2004, and the pair were engaged to be married. “His tattoos always have too many colors, they shouldn’t be so colorful. They should be cooler.”

“You know what we would say in my hometown about that? ‘Bless his heart,'”Jennifer Garner said in a Vanity Fair interview in 2016, shortly after her high-profile split from Affleck. “A phoenix rising from the ashes. Am I the ashes in this scenario? I take umbrage. I refuse to be the ashes.”

But Affleck insisted to DeGeneres that the tattoo represents “something very important to me,” Page Six reported. He added, “It’s very meaningful to me.”

Affleck also explained that he had kept the tattoo “private,” which has meant that any sighting of the tattoo has generated questions and headlines.

Affleck was first spotted with the tattoo in 2015, while working on the set of “Live by Night.” At the time, Us Weekly reported that the actor got the large-scale tattoo sometime after he and Garner first announced they were splitting up after 10 years of marriage.

In 2016, Affleck denied that the phoenix tattoo was real, telling Extra TV’s Mario Lopez that he just got a fake, temporary tattoo for a movie.

“I actually do have a number of tattoos … but I try to have them in places where you don’t have to do a lot of cover up … they get sort of addictive, tattoos, after a while,” Affleck told Lopez.

In his interview with DeGeneres, Affleck for the most part confirmed that the tattoo’s rebirth symbolism resonated with him. While he wouldn’t go into detail, he alluded to the past few years, which have been publicly tumultuous for him personally and career-wise.

He and Garner split up in 2015 and finalized their divorce this past October. They have three children together. Meanwhile, he was in an on-off relationship with Shookus, a “Saturday Night Live” producer, breaking up with her in August as he was dealing with a flareup of his alcohol addiction.

In addition, Affleck was briefly caught up in the #MeToo movement’s backlash against powerful men in Hollywood when he was accused online of inappropriately touching two women in the past. More recently, he was criticized for engaging in a whirlwind romance with a 22-year-old Playboy Playmate while in the middle of rehab.

In reflecting to DeGeneres about the past several years, Affleck said, “There’s temptation to get like — I could get depressed, I could be like, ‘I’ve been through a lot. That was hard, this was hard,’ or I could be kind of embarrassed.”

Affleck continued, hinting at his recent stint in rehab: “But I have to say, I feel so good right now. I’m in such a great place, kids are healthy, life is good. So whatever it took for me to get to this place, I’m grateful for.”

Martha Ross is a features writer who covers everything and anything related to popular culture, society, health, women’s issues and families. A native of the East Bay and a graduate of Northwestern University and Mills College, she’s also a former hard-news and investigative reporter, covering crime and local politics.

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